Pretty Sunflower Cookies

Besides autumn leaves, sunflowers are one of my favorite “fall” cookies. They are simple to make, but pretty enough to impress. They are also very versatile and allow plenty of room for you to add your own creative touches.

To make pretty sunflower cookies you will need:

Begin with a flower shaped cookie. I’ve found one that I like to use for sunflowers, but any flower cutter will do as long as it has several petals. If it’s not quite as “sunflower-y” as you’d like, just use icing to correct the shape. That’s what I did here…

You’ll get the best results by setting aside two days to work on these. One for flooding, and the second for details. It sounds like a long time, but between baking and decorating, it’s really only about three to four hours of work.

Every once in a while I like to break it down like that because people often shy away from decorated cookies because they have a reputation for taking FOREVER to make.

Often, it DOES take two days to finish a set of cookies, the majority is of that is DRYING time rather than work time.

That said, lets get back to cookies…

Outline the sunflower using a #2 tip, flood, and let them dry overnight.

The next day, use brown 20-second icing to add centers. You can wing it, but if you’re after perfection, use something round {I chose a cookie cutter} to trace a circle onto your cookie with an edible marker. This will give you a guide to follow so all your cookies will be uniform. Let the icing set slightly, then sprinkle with sanding sugar.

A little tip from an old pro…if you don’t have brown sanding sugar, clear will work.

Actually, clear sanding sugar works for almost anything. The base icing shows through the sugar, so as long as you have clear on hand, you pretty much always have the color you need.

To finish up, outline the petals to give them a little definition then go around the center with green dots. Let the cookies dry.

Just an FYI, it is possible to make this project a one day job. If you plan ahead and pre-make flower centers, this is a three step, one day cookie project.

You can find out how to use leftover royal icing to pre-make perfect flower centers HERE.

Sunflowers are simple, pretty, and the perfect addition to your Thanksgiving spread. They’re also a great cookie for beginners. They look difficult, but they really aren’t. And they don’t take a gazillion icing colors either!

Don’t be afraid to give these a try. Your friends and family will rave, I promise.

Once more, you amaze me!!! The are gorgeous!!!! I LOVE LOVE LOVE the center!!! So 3D!

Sunflowers have always been my favorite flower and it’s easy to see why…what beauties!!!

LOVE these!! So pretty! I made my FIRST cookies last night. They totally are beginner cookies but I still loved them. I’m not quite sure I got the icing right but I’ll keep practicing. Piping is NOT easy but flooding is a heck of a lot of fun. And hello….your sugar cookie recipes is YUM-O. Thanks so much for the inspiration. The fact that I finally decorated a cookie means I have justified my hoarding of all cookie cutters I come across in thrift stores.

=) PS, thrift store cutters are THE BEST!

I love the green leaves almost as much as the flowers! The dew droplets are perfect.

These are so dang pretty. The green and fall-colored leaves too. I’m completely jealous of your mad skills. I have a bunch of different sized leaf and flower cutters – I’m goin’ for it this year. ;o)
I love seeing all your amazing creations on here. So inspiring. Now if I could just get my icing to cooperate. :o)

I love the definition on the center of the flower and my goodness you even have little water droplets on the leaves in the top photo!

I LOVE these! Sunflowers are one of my favorite flowers and they are a great choice for autumn/Thanksgiving goodies. I’m going to have to try these, I think I hae a sun cutter that will work just fine.

Love, love, love them. Beautiful. You are so talented. Good bless your hands.

too cute! And they do look easy, will have to try!

These are so cute! Have you tried the heat gun that everyone is talking about to speed up drying time? It’s supposed to speed up the dry time and make them shiny. Im going to give these a try. Thanks for sharing your time and talent with us!
Ansa

They look great! You mention using clear sanding sugar……what about making your own sanding sugar. Couldn’t you take sugar and color it? I did that for my patriotic strawberries that were dipped in chocolate, but would that work on cookies?

Oh yes! I do it all the time. I drop a drop or two of americolor in a baggie with clear sugar. Works well. Sometimes it clumps but i run it through a sieve and that fixes it…Have you ever tried it with powdered food color? I’ve wondered if that would work…

I just love these!

How cute for Fall! I love the way you flooded the yellow color so that the initial outline is hard to see–sometimes I like the look of smooth edges. But here, I like the additional outline that you piped on afterward 🙂 Your cookies look absolutely perfect!

Thank you for posting your blog. My mother in law and I have nothing in common and have had a hard time connecting. Your blog has given us much more than sweet treats. With your cookies and ideas we have found that one common thread “Cookies”. Now we spend every weekend baking up new memories . You rock!!!

GORGEOUS PHOTOS!!! I love the addition of sanding sugar to the centers for texture! I used to try and do it all with little dots of icing…umm, yeah, that took forever. I can’t wait to try this way!

HAHAHA, I made some poppies and showed Maryann…she says, I love how you used nonpariels for the accent…UM, yeah, um, I wish {CALLYE IS MORON} I WISH I had thought of that…I may or may not have spent hours putting all those tiny dots on 60 cookies. Right there with ya, LOL! PS-I don’t wanna show my Pilgrims and Indians after yours! CUTEST Thanksgiving cookies EVER!

I really want to try your royal icing tips for making flower centres and such. I might be brave enough one of these days.

these are so beautiful, love all the details!

I cannot enter your contest because I do not live in the US but I thought I would email you and let you know that although I have been reading your website for only a short time you have helped me so much with all your generous tutorials, your helpful directories to other sites and your giving, sweet, funny, sunny heart.
I do make your cookies and have gotten better with my icing, thanks to you. At work everybody raves about my cookies and thinks I am sooo talented when it’s all because of you and your other generous website friends.
I just wanted to say “thanks”. You have opened up a whole new world for me and I seem to have an aptitude for it. You are special to me.

Love how happy and colorful these are!

They look absolutely perfect!

Beautiful as always Callye! How do you get your green dots to not discolor with the brown icing? How long do you wait in between that step or do you wait? I’ve found that I have to do brown dots around the edge because even with waiting, the dots will get discolored from the brown centers. I don’t have humidity like you guys do, but I do have bleeding colors which I find hugely frustrating. I often break my cookie projects out into multiple days because of the drying time in between steps so they won’t bleed. Your cookies are always so beyond gorgeous!

I just finished the first Wilton Cake Decorating class. It was fantastic! I did learn a lot of helpful hints. But now looking at your cookies, by the way they are GORGEOUS, I can adapt what I learned with what you are sharing! Thank you and I look forward to seeing more of your cookies.
Happy Holidays,
Karen

Wow, these are really neat. I love baking cookies, cakes, cupcakes, anything. It is so much fun. These are awesome! Looking forward to checking out the rest of your blog and the neat things that you have done.

Wow! These look great, and yummy also. I am just attempting my first cookies ever and am using advice from your hello kitty examples. Thanks for all the great pointers.
~Felicianna

I LOVE these!!! Great job 🙂

I so don’t know how to decorate cookies like that. I tend to “smear”! After reading your tute, I am going to give it another try. Thanks! I’ll be linking on weefolkart.com’s Facebook page. They look too pretty to eat!

I love these cookies and especially the leaves. How do you get the dots to look like water drops on the leaves. Your attention to detail is amazing!

I have this cutter and have never been truly happy with the cookies I’ve made. I may try it again.

I’m so discouraged right now. I tried to make these sunflowers today but I can’t seem to get the flood icing to come our right. I have a friend who does a lot of cake & cookie decorating and has her own version of RI. Her RI instructions are in reverse of yours – wet ingredients into mixer first, then dry. So I followed her instructions. I have a lovely piping icing from it, but when I tried to thin it for flooding, it eventually started to separate and look like curdled milk. So, I started over and this time I did it in the order of your instructions, dry ingredients, then wet. The recipes are very similar but hers is smaller and I know I like the flavor, but it eventually started to look grainy rather than smooth and when I tried to actually flood a cookie with it, it had separated and didn’t work at all. Advice?

These cookies look amazing. Not a friendly kid recipe though with all the details that are in them. Where did you find the cookie cutters at? Thanks for the step by step guide as well.

Ok, please ignore my earlier post, I just figured out where I went wrong. The recipe I was using called for shortening and though I can compared it to a bunch of other recipes, I realize now I didn’t compare it your yours. I always seem to learn things the hard way…. LOL

Hi! I am wondering where you bought your sunflower cookie cutter! I’m not sure if you said it in past comments, but I skimmed through and did not see it if you already got asked/answered the question! Can you please let me know (if you remember) where you bought your beautiful sunflower cookie cutter? It is perfect. Thank you in advance!